Friday Vocabulary

1. hawser — large rope or small cable for warping, towing, or mooring

With muffled paddles the trio made their way beneath the six inch hawser to the stern of the English merchantman, grimly set upon their treacherous work.

 

2. pepperpot (also pepper-pot) — pepperbox; something or someone figuratively like a pepperpot

But Brawley was quite the pepperpot both on and off the field, and too often had to be restrained by his teammates from igniting a serious brawl for the least (or even an imagined) insult.

 

3. jupon — short, sleeveless tunic worn over armor

His shield and crest had been lost in the battle, and his once fine features were now destroyed forever, but when we turned the body over we knew him by the boar’s head embroidered upon his jupon and we bewailed that Lord Cannell was dead.

 

4. fazenda — [Portuguese] estate or large farm

We enjoyed a few days comfort at the fazenda while supplies were obtained for our journey up river.

 

5. flump — to fall or move heavily with a thump

Roscoe was so exhausted that he just flumped down on the path as soon as the rest period was announced, without even bothering to seek shade from the sun.

 

6. char — odd job, household chore

Now that the chars were done I could fill a pipe and sit upon the stoop, enjoying the setting sun and the peaceful scenery.

 

7. gleet — watery or purulent discharge, as from a wound

The bleeding had stopped, but I found gleet upon the bedclothes which gave me cause to worry.

 

8. isochrony — state of occurring at same time or occupying same length of time; theory of linguistic division of time into equal parts

Further evidence that the age of miracles had not quite ended was found in the perfect isochrony between the extended commercial break and his hurried trip to the bathroom.

 

9. nowhither — to no place; nowhere

For all this preparation, however, and with nineteen years of schooling, Jocelyn still managed to arrive nowhither, joining those who had come to that absence without any education at all.

 

10. shagreen — untanned leather with rough pebbled surface; sharkskin used as an abrasive

Jacob took out his traveling writing case and removed a shagreen ink pot which he set upon the table just above the foolscap.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

pons asinorum — ‘bridge of asses’, fifth proposition of Euclid’s first book; difficult point in learning a subject

He is quite expert in database queries, and can build an effective cursor in a trice, but object-oriented programming seems to be his personal pons asinorum and so you can see he is quite useless to me.

Friday Vocabulary

1. enucleate — to remove the nucleus; to remove (kernel, tumor, eyeball) from its surrounding cover

Nebuchadnezzar famously enucleated King Zedekiah before taking him off to captivity in Babylon.

 

2. afferent — [biology] leading inward or conducting towards, as of nerves or other physiological pathways to organs

One theory of tinnitus holds that the sufferer’s hearing is confused by excessive information from the afferent pathways leading towards the eardrum, that the sounds of the very air in the ear canal are perceived to be excessively loud.

 

3. eurhythmic — harmoniously proportioned; of or related to system of exercises and body movements developed in early 20th Century

Le Corbusier created buildings based upon eurhythmic dance exercises.

 

4. glacis — gentle slope; sloping bank before the counterscarp of a fortress

We surveyed the acclivity leading up to their fortified position, which continual machine gun and mortar fire had denuded, leaving an effective glacis we would have to ascend, but which a few men with a single machine gun could defend with ease.

 

5. complaisant — willing to please, obliging

Do not be fooled by the benignant and complaisant appearance of that old man, for he is a treacherous and possibly murderous rogue.

 

6. dado — lower part of interior wall when finished differently than upper portion; grooved slot in board into which another board is fixed

The once luxurious dado of red and gold brocade was worn by the years of heat, compounded by the dampness infesting the mouldering house.

 

7. phiz — [British slang] face

I slowly raised my eyes from my beer, to look into the ugliest phiz it was ever my misfortune to see.

 

8. umbelliferous — belonging to the parsley family; having umbels

The umbelliferous nature of the soup’s ingredients made the dish look as if a tiny forest were emerging from a lake of broth.

 

9. moiety — half; part; [anthropology] either of two parts into which a tribe is divided

But rather than using this forum to advance his ideas, Clerkenwell devoted a moiety of his speech to repeating the same base attacks upon his rival, attacks which were known to be false even as he repeated them once more.

 

10. erythema — redness of the skin caused by increased capillary flow

Bjorn didn’t recognize the bull’s eye erythema as a symptom of Lyme’s disease, and didn’t seek treatment as soon as he should have.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(idiom)

in pig — (of a sow) pregnant

“Billy, you’ve got to keep that dog away from Mindy while she’s in pig.”

Friday Vocabulary

1. peltry — pelts collectively

Such families of Indians—bedraggled, half-starving, and bone weary from their threadbare existence at the edge of merest survival—supplied in their thousands the peltry for one of Europe’s most important streams of commerce.

 

2. aluminium — [British] aluminum

In fact, aluminium is quite widespread; the difficulty is extracting the valuable element from the ores in which it is found.

 

3. heortology — study of the festivals in the ecclesiastical year

That was the year of the Great Easter Schism, when a dispute over the actual date of the full moon between the two leading heortology departments caused half the faithful to celebrate too early, or (in the view of these celebrants) the other half to celebrate too late.

 

4. wen — benign sebaceous cystic tumor

The radical journalist William Cobbett first called London “the Great Wen,” likening the burgeoning metropolis to a swelling excrescence upon the face of the nation.

 

5. inflorescence — arrangement of flowers upon a plant; blossoming, process of flowering

This spectacle of desert beauty is made all the more precious by the fact that the period of inflorescence lasts only for a week or two.

 

6. turbary — land where peat or turf may be cut for fuel; legal right to cut turf or peat on such land

Each freeholder of the island were adjudged to have common of turbary for supplying his own home with fuel, but not for sale.

 

7. empiric — one who relies solely upon experience; quack, charlatan

But the vaunted ‘cure’ of the celebrated empiric nearly killed the boy, surprising the mother and no one else.

 

8. cwt — abbreviation for hundredweight

Margin in livestock is the sales price per cwt less the purchase price per cwt, not the profit realized from the sale.

 

9. tercel (also tiercel) — the male of a hawk, esp. of the goshawk, peregrine falcon, or gyrfalcon

The master’s tercel has finer chambers than we, who are compelled to sleep in whatever corner we may find unoccupied.

 

10. floccillation — delirious picking at bedclothes, carphology

Just as floccillation in a fevered patient is a serious symptom betokening a poor prognosis, so may our society’s current nit-picking be a bellwether of a cultural malaise.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(from the wealthy Roman L. Licinius Lucullus, famous for his luxurious banquets)

Lucullian — lavish, profligate

After the Lucullian feast in such an extravagant setting, the halting after-dinner speech of the quondam gubernatorial hopeful was weak fare indeed.

One Hundred and Eighteen Thousand Songs (118,000)

Almost failed to notice that I’ve passed another imaginary milepost and have now listened to 118,000 unique iTunes ‘songs’,* which I did five days ago, just before noon. (That would be Thursday for those of you playing along at home.) The 118,000th track was the rip-roaring “Totem Pole” by the tragically fated Lee Morgan, off his terrific Sidewinder album, which was a bona fide best seller. It was recorded in 1964, that is, three years into the ‘Other’ division into which Ken Burns placed jazz made after 1961. The gentle opening—reminiscent of “Night In Tunisia” to this untutored listener—goes off into a bop fantasy that builds and rolls across the ears like blues being smuggled across the desert on a nighttime freight train.

The Stats

With 118,000 unique tracks heard, I have listened to 513 days, 3 hours, 16 minutes, and 52 seconds of total music and other audio (↑ 3 days and 3 hours), which occupy 779.84 GB of digital ‘space’ (↑ 6.58 GB). Remaining to be heard in my iTunes library are (or rather were, as I’ve been listening to music since last Thursday) 76,398 tracks, 848 less than last report—which means I’ve added 152 new files since then. Those unheard tunes take up 522.86 GB (↓ 5.07 GB) on one of my external hard drives, and will take 263 days, 20 hours, 51 minutes, and 59 seconds (↓ 10 hours) to listen to, assuming I listen to them straight through (I won’t).

To reach the 117,000th unique track, I listened to 1,131 songs since track #117,000. Those songs occupy 7.22 GB of data, and 3 days, 4 hours, and 38 minutes of time. Thus over by far the majority of the songs listened to were heard for the first time, as I’ve been focusing on the stuff I haven’t listened to or rated yet.

It took only 77 days to listen to the last thousand songs, much less time than the previous thousand, which shows how much time I spend listening and re-listening to songs for my cousins’ mix CDs. This means I heard almost 13 new songs each day.

12.99 New Tracks Heard per Day

If we include the previously heard songs, we find that I heard 14.7 tracks per day, a huge increase from the less than seven-and-a-half per day in the last set of one thousand songs, which was the nadir of my songs per day listening. This is primarily due to hearing shorter songs (I almost listen to music exclusively while driving to work, though I’m trying to change that) and the end of the CD making.

14.7 Tracks Heard per Day

I make no promise this time of further analysis of these songs, and may just attempt to wait until I have hit a nice even number, if I can do that before new technology renders this whole exercise pointless and irretrievable. (I append here my previous note on the same, which itself was previously inserted in the last report.)

 

(Previous previous note)

I am also beginning to wonder if my analysis of my listened-to songs will survive the transition to a new MacOS and its ‘updated’ Music software (or are we supposed to call it an ‘app’ now?). Usually I would go into an Apple store and poke around in it, but I guess I’ll just have to write a blog post about it, though I fear the inevitable responses about going to Windows (or Linux, from the weirdos)—which I suppose would be better than the actual response, which is to say, none at all. Besides, I have to write up my history of why it took me five days to set up my wife’s new iPhone, and before that I really do owe Bill an explanation of why I asked for a handful of Lego pieces for Christmas a few years back. *Sigh* Maybe next time I have to do taxes I’ll procrastinate in such a way. Until then …

… that’s all folks. See you next time!

* Those who know me and my listening habits may object to the term ‘song’ in this context, but I intend by this all sorts of audio, not just those products dedicated to the Aodean muse. Thus radio dramas, sound clips from TV shows, band introductions, children’s stories, WWII news broadcasts, and any other sound files are included in the basket of ‘songs’ as I use this term.

Friday Vocabulary

1. depilate — to remove hair from, “to make bare of hair” [OED]

Josun had originally depilated his arms and legs because of the bicycle racing; now, however, it had become something of an obsession.

 

2. arrack — liquor made from fermented sap of palm or cane or fermented rice, typically distilled in India and Southeast Asia

Both men were insensate, the one laid low by arrack and the other by hashish, the stentorian snores of the former a marked contrast to the drooling slumbers of the other.

 

3. scion — shoot or twig; descendant

While Ferdinand’s odd project of placing books into abandoned shopping carts might be thought a scion of the Little Library idea, his penchant for only sharing copies of Ayn Rand’s Anthem suggests a more complex scheme.

 

4. vesta — [British] short wax or wood friction match

The weak flame of my next-to-last vesta revealed only that the presence of writing upon the rusted iron sign before it sputtered and died out.

 

5. billycock — derby or bowler hat

We finally captured the errant hamster beneath the brand new billycock of Charles, who immediately searched for an alternative rodent prison, fearing for his heretofore spotless headgear.

 

6. destrier — war-horse, charger

The bold knight jumped down from his destrier and with his mace cleared the slavering barbarians away from the fallen maiden.

 

7. welk — [obsolete] to fade, to wilt, to wither

But now are summer’s flowers all welked and sere, and the ache of frost is in the morning wind.

 

8. envoi (also envoy) — closing stanza of poem; author’s concluding remarks

A lone piper played a mournful tune as the final troop ship cast off, a fitting envoi to the close of British rule on this small island.

 

9. false key — lockpick or skeleton key

Dottie and I returned to our rooms to find that some thief had opened our trunks (doubtless by means of false keys, as no marks of a pry were found) and rifled through their contents.

 

10. turf (also turf out) — [British idiom] to forcibly remove, to kick out

After building the houses and making improvements for twelve years, these families are now turfed by the council’s new requirements from the very homes they made.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(slang)

thunder mug — small portable signal cannon with a handle; chamber pot

As a guest I felt it my duty to carry the thunder mug out back to empty its contents onto the midden.

Friday Vocabulary

1. pyx — small container for holding the consecrated bread of the Eucharist; [rare] box

The tiny, decorative boxes so enamored of by modern collectors hearken back to the enameled pyxides of the famous Limoges workshops, regularly made there since the 13th Century.

 

2. teal — small dabbling duck from which the mallard evolved

Some now dispute that the green-winged teal is in fact a separate species from its more famous European cousin.

 

3. gaffer — chief electrician in film or TV production; oldster; [British] foreman

Mr. Darnby, the boss, were a fine sort, but his gaffer was the worst kind of petty tyrant.

 

4. hippopotamic — enormous, cumbersome

But on my third attempt to force my mother’s hippopotamic suitcase into the back seat, I finally admitted that there was simply no way that she and I and it were ever going to fit into my tiny 1967 Volkwagen Beetle.

 

5. vedette — mounted sentry patrolling beyond an army’s outposts

Even if we can evade the vedettes we still must pass somehow through the skirmish line before we could ever find your captured brother.

 

6. gloaming — twilight of the evening

The pretended philosophers practicing in the gloaming of the Roman Empire merely practiced sophistic casuistry in support of the latest Emperor.

 

7. toponymy — study of place names

Why over fifty American cities and counties are named for the naval hero of 1812 and of the Barbary Coast is an interesting question of toponymy.

 

8. sett — lair of a badger; distinctive pattern of a Scottish tartan

The hill is also home to a large group of badgers, whose sett was first noted over five hundred years ago.

 

9. moraine — mound of rocks and debris left by passage of a glacier

Crossing the granite scree of the moraine was made doubly difficult by the sudden summer storm.

 

10. murrain — cattle disease; [obsolete] plague

Though the old crone threatened to curse us with a murrain upon our cattle, we were not worried, having no livestock.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(nautical)

glory hole — small shipboard storeroom

The midshipman had just returned from the glory hole with the captain’s spare spectacles when the cannonball hit him.

The Bitter Stump

The stump sobs for its pinecone babies unborn,
Seeds in their prisons a blasphemous broken promise.
Each ring on the tabled trunk now a year of defeat,
Spring frozen by death and circumstance.
Beneath the sawdust of nature’s hopes
The sap congeals, anger in amber.
The wound blots out proud heights and soaring sky
Leaving only choking tumor of pine.
To remove the stump? — an ox, countless winters,
Or the lightning strike. A mountain cannot
Know when the petrified heart will empty.
The nearby seedlings shudder;
The bitterest roots linger longest.

Friday Vocabulary

1. knobkerrie (also knobkerry) — short wooden club with heavy knob at its head used by South African tribes

The similarities between the knobkerrie and the shillelagh go further than the merely physical, however, as both were banned by the ‘powers-that-were’.

 

2. futtock shroud — [nautical] lines securing platform attached to mast by running below the top to the mast itself

Jake’s experience hauling himself up the futtock shrouds stood him in good stead as he hauled himself up the overhanging cornice to rescue the mewling kitten.

 

3. lucerne — alfalfa

We walked through fields of lucerne towards the cliffside village, the fragrant crop contrasting with the salt spray of the ocean breezes.

 

4. crab — [falconry] (of a hunting hawk) to claw or to fight with another hawk, rather than the intended prey

But then she spied Sir Percy’s bird and they crabbed at once, plummeting to the earth as they fought.

 

5. pertinacious — stubbornly or persistently holding to a purpose, opinion, or plan

Your pertinacious zeal may have served you on the playing fields, sir, but your present contumacy will lead only to your eventual loss.

 

6. whinge — [British] to whine, to complain

It’s always the toughest blokes that whinge the most about having to do chores around camp.

 

7. bumboat — small boat selling provisions or wares to ships in port or offshore

All the sailors knew just which bumboat would sell them liquor on the sly, though the officers remained entirely ignorant.

 

8. tineman — night officer of the forest in medieval England

Nobody really expects any better from a lazy tineman than to stay quietly in his shelter until sunup, so we were surprised to hear Archibald’s booming voice ordering us to stop.

 

9. impecunious — penniless, poor

The former titan of industry is now an impecunious dry goods merchant, struggling to make ends meet where once he left five dollar steaks half eaten upon his plate.

 

10. anisotropy — difference in the value of a substance’s properties along different axes

The strength of pressboard is needed where the anisotropy of most woods might lead to breakage along the lines of grain.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(fashion, late 19th Century to 1970s)

liberty bodice — sleeveless bodice originally created as a less constrictive alternative to corsets

In addition to providing warmth during the chilly English winters, a child’s liberty bodice with its cotton strapping was supposed to develop good posture.

Friday Vocabulary

1. bittacle — [obsolete] binnacle, box on ship’s deck for the compass

Be sure to use wooden pegs or the like in constructing the bittacle, for metal nails can attract the compass.

 

2. barney — [British] fight, quarrel, brawl

Terence spent the night in jail after getting into a barney with some other drunken louts and thus he has an alibi for the murder.

 

3. ninnyhammer — fool, simpleton

If he seems a mighty Solomon, it is solely because he surrounds himself with such ninnyhammers as to make his every phrase appear genius in stark comparison to the drivel about him.

 

4. scarify — to make scratches or light incisions (as in vaccination); to wound, to make sore; to make cuts in the bark of a tree

The duo finally made it through the brambles surrounding the top, Kris’s shins and calves so thoroughly scarified that Devon felt glad he had worn long jeans even on such a hot day.

 

5. surd — irrational number (esp. a root); voiceless consonant; [obsolete] deaf; stupid

But try as he will, the student will find he is left with an irreducible surd, namely the root of 2, just that number at the heart of the occult mysticism of the Pythagoreans and the cause of the murder of Hippasus.

 

6. vizard — [archaic] mask, visor

Dame Whitby affects a vizard, not to hew to the latest fashion, but to hide the marks of the pox upon her cheek and brow.

 

7. lumber — to encumber, to obstruct or heap

Dusty albums and boxes of old photographs lumbered the bottom shelves, making the books thereupon almost inaccessible.

 

8. university — [obsolete] totality, entirety; the universe

They are wrong, he taught, who speak of this or that animal as being “bad” or “evil”, for the university of life comes from the Creator of all things, of Whose creation there is nothing which is not good, which does not redound to His glory.

 

9. pettifogger — inferior legal practitioner, esp. one who cavils and engages in questionable acts; any petty practitioner

I doubt that he was any worse than any of the other pettifoggers who pervaded Congress during that dark time in our history, but he was cursed beyond his fellows with an absolute and irredeemable lack of humor.

 

10. exogamous — of or practicing the custom of marriage only outside one’s clan, tribe, or group

Pinkie shocked his Eton classmates when he not only married outside his class but pushed this exogamous predilection so far as to marry an American.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(business formal, legal)

of even date — of the same date

This letter is in response to your inquiry of even date regarding our ability to supply you with thirteen tons of cotton balls.

Friday Vocabulary

1. remise — second fencing thrust made after failure of the first; coach house

Well, in for a dollar in for a pound, as they say, and since my lunge had left me in an exposed position I essayed a remise under the decorative spaulder of the sneering French lord, changing his expression in a nonce.

 

2. remise — [law] to release, to surrender (any claim, etc.); to put back, to convert again

Such joy as the family had when they learned that Sir Ewen had remised his soul to almighty God was palliated somewhat by the speed with which the Deity asserted His claim.

 

3. ankylose — to stiffen, join, or fuse together two originally distinct bones, or bone and another substance (such as a tooth)

The phalanges of his middle toe had become ankylosed due to his distressing (to him, I’m sure) habit of breaking that particular toe almost every summer.

 

4. natheless — [archaic] nevertheless

Well you ken that your guardian is my own foresworn enemy, natheless I shall see you safely through this dismal wood, if it be in my power.

 

5. ontic — noumenal, of the real rather than phenomenal

The last bastions of atomist philosophy seem to have fallen under the persuasive ontic presence of quantum entanglement, forever putting paid to the idea that the observer does not affect that which is observed.

 

6. fascia — [British] automobile dashboard

The panoply of dials and buttons and levers and other gewgaws on the burl wood fascia made it almost impossible to determine our rate of speed.

 

7. whatnot — stand with shelves for displaying small items; non-specified thing

The visitor’s attention was drawn irresistibly to the dark wooden whatnot in the corner where stood an astonishing array of toys, figures, tchotchkes, and whatnot acquired from a lifetime of eating nothing but Happy Meals for lunch.

 

8. scuppernong — muscadine grape variety native to North Carolina; wine made from this grape

For the adults, a little scuppernong was added to the syllabub.

 

9. lurdan — sluggard, lazy person

Dane was always a loutish lurdan, lording it over his betters as if being born into a rich family were a worthy accomplishment.

 

10. prosector — dissector of dead bodies, as for anatomical research or autopsy

When the gross examination was performed by the prosector it was immediately obvious that Mrs. Cartwright’s doctor had erred when he claimed she had an enlarged heart.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

dosh — money, cash

You know as well as I do that he doesn’t make enough dosh to afford the new car he’s driving around town.